Fears due to increase of public domestic violence

The number of violent public acts has increased by over 1,000 offenses, a report by the West Midlands Police and Crime Board has revealed.

Senior police officers in the West Midlands believe that over a fifth of all violence in public places is linked to cases of domestic abuse, reports the Birmingham Post.

A report the West Midlands Police and Crime Board members this week revealed ‘public place violence' (with injury) has increased by 10.8 per cent (1,048 offences) when compared to 2013/14.

Board member, Brendan Connor, said: "An area of concern for me is public place violence. If you look at the trends it has dropped from 1,600 (in 2009) to around 800 per month. There has been this diminishing trend but we are now starting to see it come back up the other side of the curve. We don't want this accelerating up again and creating fear in public places."

Deputy Chief Constable Dave Thompson told the meeting that one-fifth of all public place violence related to non-residential domestic abuse.

He said: "Town centre violence is not the main issue in these figures. One fifth of the figures relate to non-residential domestic abuse. This poses quite hard challenges about how we police it because it is about policing a type of behaviour, which is difficult. We are doing some work with the Violence Alliance and we are also getting quite a lot of traction with health services. But this is very difficult for local commanders to police. You can't ‘hotspot' this like you can for crimes like burglary and robbery."

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